SUNBATHING.
Isobel Beech.
Locations are Melbourne, Australia and Pescara (Italy)
Our narrator travels to Pescara where she visits friends and ruminates on the death of her father.
Life in an Italian village with rustic simplicity proves refreshing. Her friends live a basic lifestyle, she a printmaker, he a writer on his first novel. Funny how writers need to escape their own background to clear the emotions that consume them. Or another culture.
A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES.
IAN RANKIN.
in the meantime
We often have to wait for reserved Libby books, so nothing like a filler, what with Rebus as a retiring (?) Detective moving house. Let us read what goes on in his new apartment and lifestyle.
That will be our discovery.
AN IRISH HOSTAGE
Charles Todd
Charles introduces (or re-presents) the British nursing sister Bess Crawford as part of a series.
He writes well and tells a good tale The setting is post ww11 when an English nurse is a passenger in a small plane to Ireland.
She is a cool heroine facing hostility. She came for the wedding of her Irish friend Eileen but the groom Michael goes missing. The story is set after the Rising, where the main push is for Home Rule. An emotional and difficult adventure awaits Bess.
A BOOKSHOP IN ALGIERS
KAOUTHER ADIMI
This charming book set in French Algieria would, for me, have been better as a reading book.
My reason is that as an audiobook reader it was difficult to catch all the names due to French pronunciation, which is not my forte.
From 1936 we followed a small history of French Algerian authors whose manuscripts were printed as books through the bookshop of Edmond Charlot. I don’t know many except for Albert Camus. Ryad, a young man who has to clear the bookshop shelves, becomes the narrator.
The discovery of the the simple notebooks of Edmond Charlot by Ryad reveals the former bookshop owner disliked writing himself which may explain the taciturn comments in his notebooks which we follow in sequence. But he was dedicated to publishing and promoting French Algerian writers.
Exampl: in the wwii times I read the heading Germany with interest but in his utilitarian style Charlot revealed little of life in Algeria in wartime simply recorded his problems with money and paper , all sorely needed for printing.. That was his life dream, printing books.
Ryad had to clear shelves and books. From a bookshop dedicated to literature, he tried to give precious books away. However we read, sadly that …people don’t inhabit places, places are in people…
STORIES I MIGHT REGRET TELLING YOU
MARTHA WAINWRIGHT.
Martha is a singer songwriter with a famous older brother, Rufus, and related to respected Canadian folksinger duo, her mother and auntie.
This is a family story of a musician. She has Canadian connections to folk singers, Leonard Cohen included. Her father is Loudon Wainwright 111. Her Mother is Kate mcCarrigle.
Life on the road of life as Martha seeks her own musical persona. She is frank about her development.
I have listened to her songs and like her personal style.